‘Round the world, instantly, with plant photographers

Let’s travel to some cities other than Berlin and New York to marvel at their plant life. Our guides will be a couple of photographers from Instagram, a Twitter-esque network for sharing mobile phone snapshots. It’s a fun way to experience daily life in faraway cities, especially when you glimpse some greenery, as in the the lovely shot above, “Amsterdam morning,” by Ulla Välk (@bliksem). She’s based in Amsterdam but travels frequently, sharing sights from around Europe. Read on for more from Ulla…

I love this half sunflower, heavy with seeds, pulled by gravity to the ground (“Sunflower”)…

…and I think “pattern,” with a similar point of view, is a winner too, with the grass and little weeds growing between each cement element. I think I also just like that Ulla takes pictures of the ground. There’s more life down there than most people realize!

And here’s one more by Ulla, which feels so dreamy to me, with the gently glowing baby squash and purple-flowered vines. It’s called “mom’s container garden,” which reminds me of the container garden at Sara’s house that she reported on a few years ago.

Travelling on to the other side of the globe, let’s head for Thailand to admire some incredible plants documented by @thesadpou, who uses Photoshop to add some crazy candy colors to his documentations of daily life in Bangkok. Despite the psychedelic atmosphere, the character of the plants still shines through, don’t you think so? Here’s “Siam center”…

and this one’s simply titled “The Root” – wow!

Thanks to @thesadpou and @bliksem for sharing your cities’ plants with us and for allowing us to share your photos on Urban Plant Research. Readers, if you have access to Instagram (it’s only available on a few devices so far, but hopefully it will expand) check out these two photographers!

Whether or not you’re plugged in to other photo-sharing networks, you can share your plant photos with us using good old-fashioned email (ha ha) – we’re always happy to receive and share images and thoughts from readers on urban flora.

First four photos courtesy @bliksem / Ulla Välk. Fifth and sixth photos courtesy @thesadpouΟ™.